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By: Ina Steiner

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If you listed or revised items on eBay between the morning of September 17 and 6:30pm PT on September 19, they may not be indexed into eBay Search. eBay issued an announcement on the Systems Announcement Board on Friday night to warn sellers about the problem.

"At this time, we are asking sellers NOT to end and relist these items, because we don't know at this point whether the relisted items will index properly. However, we do know that new items will index properly, so if you'd like to end your affected listing and start a new listing from scratch, that will be fine, and it should index into Search properly.

We will update this post when we have more information. In the meantime, please be assured that we will be automatically crediting fees for all impacted listings (whether active or closed) early next week. Thank you for your patience, and we apologize for the frustration this is causing you."

There had been intermittent errors when performing title and description search on September 17, and eBay said some items displayed "Page Not Responding" errors on Friday morning.

Update 9/22/08: eBay announced Monday morning the problem was resolved, but said sellers should not relist listings impacted by the glitch. Instead, they should create new listings from scratch. See AuctionBytes Newsflash article.

by: Kal

Sat Sep 20 13:53:22 2008

eBay considers ''finding'' the most important thing on the site, yet it's the thing they screw around with the most, the thing that is broken the most, and the thing that causes sellers AND buyers the most grief. Why the hell didn't they just leave it alone?

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: mike

Sat Sep 20 15:03:16 2008

''so if you'd like to end your affected listing and start a new listing from scratch, that will be fine, and it should index into Search properly. ''

and do we get credit for those listings???

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: another PS

Sat Sep 20 16:41:24 2008

Exactly !!!!!

Do we get credit ?????

I revised a couple of listings,2 (TWO!) days later they still did not show up in search,called ebay, they say: "sorry, we are working on it"I ended auctions early (no sense in having them running if no one can see them) and will start them over in couple of days....

Will we get credit for them???

But of course not.....

only us lowly sellers are supposed to give customer satisfaction

ebay does not have to go by the same rules.......

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Keith

Sat Sep 20 20:16:06 2008

Did you guys read the entire post??? It does mention credit for items listed during that time.

As far as this "GLITCH" is concerned it is just another nail in the coffin for eBay and at this rate it won't be long for the end...

Oh and eBay you don't know anything about my frustration!

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Harriet-

Sat Sep 20 20:23:46 2008

Well, I, for one am not listing anything until they say it is all fixed. I'm done throwing money down the commode!

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: stalking horses

Sat Sep 20 22:24:30 2008

The buck stops with you HOE. Do us ALL a favor and resign. In my opinion you clearly do not know how to run this company.

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: dimes

Sun Sep 21 02:11:39 2008

How is it that eBay could have a huge search glitch, yet the sell-thru rate remains unchanged?

If you want proof that the tumbleweeds are rolling, have a look. http://tinyurl.com/54l2ls

What difference does it make if your item can be seen, if there's no one around to look at it?

Asking you to pay to have no one look at your stuff has got to be the ultimate in hubris.

And yet... people do it!

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: plj123

Sun Sep 21 11:00:51 2008

It is unbeleivable how little eBay executives know about eBay. I would suggest that every one of them, starting with donahue on down spend the next couple of months selling on ebay. Let them deal with all the BS. Let them know what it is like to get undeserved negative feedback and watch their sales plunge because of it. Let them complain to eBay only to get some stupid canned response. Let them ship the packages the same day only to get negative feedback and low DSR's because USPS may have taken longer to deliver than the customer thought . Let them deal with all the non paying bidders who leave negative feedback. Let them try making a profit while paying ebays fees. Let them lose sales because they can no longer accept checks or money orders. Let them watch paypal take 5 % of their TOTAL sale. Let them deal with the customer who sends email threatning negative feedback unless you give into their demands. LET THEM HAVE ALL THE FUN AND MAKE ALL THE MONEY!!! Try that JD fo a few months. I will be looking for your report .........Play the game for a while and then make the rules.....if you dont know how to play the game , you shouldn't be making the rules!!!

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Harriet

Sun Sep 21 18:58:26 2008

Good grief! I can't believe we haven't seen an announcement that this has been fixed, yet.

This is such an important problem. What are they thinking?

I have been dealing with an eBay search ''GLITCH'' since mid July. Apparently my ads the contained ''combined S/H~~It's automatic!!'' was read as VULGAR and did not show in any search results. Since this was the same time frame that eBay initiated ''Best Match'' I assumed my sell through rate DROPPED because of this. It wasn't until 9/7/08 that I contacted technical support via chat that the problem was Identified. I had to manually change all my ads and update my listing template. As of today there still hasn't been any response to my eBay KMM107706154V18539L0KM complaint. I suggest other eBay sellers check your auctions for other non-vulgar verbiage that might be viewed by eBay as being vulgar. Mine was S/H!!It's Automatic. It read S/H!!It's as SHIT. Once I removed S/H!!It's Automatic my sell through rate and hits SKY ROCKETED. Mike discount_shopping_channels

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: NoName

Mon Sep 22 09:46:07 2008

According to today's eBay's Announcement, eBay has a way to detect the listings that did not show up and credits will be given (this will be interesting). Sounds like they had a major programming error. Does the Programming dept get suspended for something like this?

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Christina

Mon Sep 22 12:11:32 2008

Yeah, they might eventually credit me for the fact that all weekend only 40 of my 350 listings were even visible - but will they do anything about the lost sales?

I've sold 3 items since Friday. My average items sold per day has been 30 for the last 6 months. To me, that 87 items that didn't sell but should have. I wonder what I'll tell my kids this week when they want to eat? Sorry, ebay messed something up and all of a sudden I stopped selling anything?

I've pretty much had it with eBay.

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Peter Leeflang/CEO of Leeflang Archives Corporatio

Mon Sep 22 13:39:53 2008

NOTHING has bene fixed as of todaySept. 22.

Items are still often invisible and now the problem got worse as sellers can often not relist or move items to a different format, due to that section having seriosu problems. Check the Technical Issues board.

Ebay is a total chaos now that both search and relist is not working.

Imagine, we are all require dto abid by several new rule sby October and teh site can virtually not be accessed to do so.

How are those rules going to be enforceable then if sellers cannot get their items going?

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: another PS

Mon Sep 22 16:42:34 2008

If we were to treat our customers as ebay treats theirs, we would get booted off ebay.......

there has been an ongoing search nightmare since March and it just keeps getting worse. There needs to be an injunction ordered to stop eBay from ruining search and by extension causing us a significant loss in business. It is outrageous!

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Shelly

Mon Sep 22 19:02:13 2008

http://tinyurl.com/6zgyk4

this topic and frankly any other concerning eBay's treacherous behavior is relevant to the survey I am conducting - please fill it out. So far 216 people have

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: crystal wells

Tue Sep 23 05:03:59 2008

I think eBay needs to improve change management. For instance, if there are items that are not appearing in search (which is what the listing fee pays for), for whatever reason, these items should be indicated, and an appropriate error displayed.

What should not happen, is a seller paying for exposure and getting none, with no way to know.

If they are implementing a policy of hiding listings that "break" a policy, a rule or have vulgarity (even if its not) they should fail the listings and give the appropriate error message.

Just not displaying them in search is just irresponsible.

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Ming the Merciless

Tue Sep 23 06:28:05 2008

Ebay has known for at least four months that are serious and perhaps even fatal problems with Best Match/Search/Find.

Yet they continue to take sellers' money.

Folks, this is FRAUD and fraud is a crime!!

Ebay can NOT continue to hide beyond the Glitch Excuse. What they're doing is FRAUD, and fraud is a crime.

Accepting money for services not rendered and/or taking money when ebay has no intention of providing said services is FRAUD. Fraud is a crime.

Forget SNAD complaints. File CRIMINAL complaints. Star with the San Jose PD or your local PD or Sheriff.

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Dennis

Tue Sep 23 09:06:03 2008

I'm sooo glad I don't sell on eBay anymore. I have my own Internet site, use google adwords and don't have to deal with eBay's nonsense. I won't be surprised when management leaves (is removed). eBay is heading toward becoming a footnote in Internet history and I have a front row seat :)

eBay Glitch Affects Exposure in Search

by: Shelly

Tue Sep 23 13:08:30 2008

http://tinyurl.com/6zgyk4

256 people have filled out the survey

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